There is a fourth possibility, and that is that there are many people who have psychological needs for salvation, but that there is no real possibility of the kind of salvation people are after, no rea salvation.

In that case salvation is an illusion and those who think they are saved are deluded. That delusion may be a happier state than desperately feeling a need for salvation, though. I don't think anything can be imposed on people en masse for long that does not satisfy, or appear to satisfy, some need they feel.

But saying, for example, that someone "inoculated people against reality" is already an interpretation of his act, not the act itself. Of course, then there are those who will say it's not so, that it's not merely an interpretation. — baker

If Trump lies, some may interpret it as him speaking truth. Nonetheless it seems plausible to think there is a fact of the matter as to whether he lied. When it comes to whether Trump's vision for the US and the world is a good one or not, then we might be harder pressed to justify claiming there is a fact of the matter about that, even though it might seem obvious that his vision is bogus.

Free will in a deterministic world would not be free will as it is conceived in the libertarian sense. It would simply consist in a lack of constraints preventing you from acting according to your antecedently determined nature.

If we want to discuss Trump, then we must all see him as Trump, not as Hillary Clinton or Shirley Temple, no? We must all first agree about what he has been recorded as saying and doing, before we can disagree about our interpretations of his acts, no?

Sure, there are some obvious instances of people "seeing the same things".

Is Pluto a planet or not? When you look at Pluto, you might see a planet, but someone else doesn't. How so? — baker

When you and I see Pluto, whether through a telescope (that we also both see) or on a TV ( a TV that we both see) or a photo in a magazine (a magazine that we both see) we presumably see the same image or object, but we might disagree about what category to assign it to.

How do you know we in fact see the same things? — baker

It seems obvious. When I'm working with another carpenter and I ask her to pass me the saw, she does not pass me the router. When I throw the ball for my dog he sees it as a ball to be chased, not a food bowl to be eaten from. No social coordination at all would be possible if humans and animals did not see the same things in their environments.

It's not clear to me what you are trying to get at, Baker.

If we all saw different things; if I saw a bus where you saw a tree, then no normativity would be possible. The fact that at the basic level of bare perception we see the same things is not a fact engineered by us. My dog sees the same things I do, judging from his behavior.

What kind of question is that?

So let's apply this to a practical example:

When the critics of Trump and his followers make claims about them, they (ie. the critics) believe that they are making claims about how things really are.


How do you comment? — baker

I've been talking about perception not politics.

I don't see it that way. Why do we, as societies, desire normativity? I'd say it is because we care about social harmony. We don't need to establish normativity when it comes to bare perception; the commonality is there for us, it is not something engineered by us. Psychological normativity and moral normativity are pragmatic concerns; a society functions better and people are happier if there is harmony.

There you fixated on contamination and distortion, ignoring conditioning. Anti-Realists certainly hold that reality is conditioned by the human subject. Imputation of or fixation on distortion tends to beg the question, but it is ultimately pertinent given that we are considering the possibility of knowing reality as it is in itself. Thus it is a distortion in relation to that counterfactual possibility. — Leontiskos

I would have thought that reality as it is in itself cannot be known in principle, because reality as it is in itself is defined by its not being reality as it appears to us. It's an imaginable conceptual distinction. On this definition it follows that anything we know is not reality as it is in itself.

But I don't consider reality as it appears to us to be any less real than reality as it is in itself. Reality as it appears to us is a function of reality as it is in itself, because reality as it appears to us is on account of the effect the environment has on us precognitively.

In the lived moment we are blind to that process; the best we can do is observe and analyze the environment and our physiologies as they appear to be. So, I'm saying that appearances are real, as real as what gives rise to them, and more real for us, given that we can only think of the in itself, we cannot know how it is.

The "glassy aspect" is merely representative of that which conveys reality in a way other than it is in itself; a "distortion," so to speak. — Leontiskos

I would not agree that Kant thinks our cognitions distort reality. I think he would agree that what we perceive is real; the way I see the tree, for example, is just the real way the tree appears to a human percipient. So, our perceived appearances of the tree are real, not illusory or distorted in any way, but they are not the whole story of the tree. It can appear differently to different kinds of percipients, different animals.

The way the tree appears to us is a function of what it is in itself, in conjunction with what we are in ourselves, but being an appearance, it is perspectival, whereas what it is as unperceived cannot be perspectival. The tree can only appear from some perspective or other, but it does not follow that it can only exist from some perspective or other. It also does not follow that we can only exist from some perspective or other, even though it is true that we can only understand our existence from some perspective or other..

:up: All you say there makes good sense to me.

:up:

a lack of transparency in argument leads to a weakening and breakdown of philosophical communities. — Leontiskos

I agree with that, assuming that you mean everything should be out in the open and that there should be no hidden or unacknowledged premises at work in philosophical discussions.

But I am probably not honing in on the exact difference that Banno and creativesoul are meting out. — Leontiskos

I think @creativesoul is either trading on, or confusing himself with, an ambiguity of expression: "S believes a broken clock is not broken". The belief S holds is not that a clock is both broken and not broken, so while it is correct in one sense (from our POV) that S's belief is about a broken clock, from S's POV the belief is not about a broken clock. It's all about context.

I’ll ask you the same question that I asked the thread starter (and they ignored). Do you know of anyone who religion has provided deliverance from sin and its consequences? — praxis

I don't think so. I guess the question is who is to be the judge when it comes to personal salvation...or enlightenment?

:up:

It pertains to empirical arguments and metaphysical arguments and arguments about astrology and homeopathy and alien abductions. The advice given in the OP is meant to aid arguments of all kinds. — Leontiskos

OK, fair enough...I guess I misunderstood where you were going with it.

If you don't believe metaphysics is truth-apt then presumably you don't get into a lot of arguments about metaphysics. Similarly, because we don't believe taste is truth-apt, we don't argue about taste ("de gustibus non disputandum est"). My advice in the OP applies to arguments, and people argue about theses that they believe are susceptible of truth and falsity. — Leontiskos

Well, I do get into arguments about whether metaphysical arguments are truth-apt, and I think it is true that they are not, for the simple reason that their premises cannot be determined to be true or false. I think acceptance or rejection of metaphysical premises cannot but be a matter of taste, and as you say we don't argue about taste. People believing metaphysical premises are susceptible of truth and falsity and their actually being so are two different things, at least if you mean by "susceptible of truth and falsity" that their truth or falsity is determinable.

Classically, a sound argument is an argument that possess both validity and true premises. An unsound argument lacks one or both. — Leontiskos

Fair enough, I am stretching the conventional meaning of "sound" somewhat to apply to premises as well as arguments. I think it is fair to say that when an argument is claimed to be sound, we mean it is taken to be true, because every part of a sound argument, if it is valid, must be true, that is true premises and true conclusions consistent with those premises. But idiosyncratic terminology aside, I think my point stands; metaphysical arguments cannot be determined to be true or false (or if you prefer, sound or unsound), whereas empirical arguments can be.

You may not want to engage this take, but I think it is apposite in that you speak of people coming to understand that philosophical arguments are true or false.

There are two basic ways that an argument can get at truth✝: by being right and by being wrong. Yet in order for this to work the argument must be seen to be right or wrong. If it is seen to be right then it will lead the one who sees it into the truth of its conclusion. If it is seen to be wrong then it will lead the one who sees it away from specious reasoning and away from an unsound conclusion. In each case the crucial factor is that it be seen that it be transparent. — Leontiskos

Now, if all you meant was that people can come to believe that philosophical arguments are true or false, then there would be no problem, but you seemed to be claiming that the truth of philosophical arguments is determinable and that is what I have been taking issue with.

That is why I acknowledged that in the case of phenomenological arguments, which are quasi-empirical, it might be more appropriate to speak of arguments (well, descriptions really) being true or false.

Can they be sound or unsound? I hold to the common view that they can. — Leontiskos

I understand "sound or unsound" to be equivalent to "true or untrue". Premises can be sound or unsound, true or untrue, but when it comes to metaphysical arguments the truth is not determinable. For example, two metaphysical postulates are "being is fundamentally physical" and "being is fundamentally mental"; these two polemical posits are the basic presuppositions of materialism and idealism respectively. Can we determine which is true? No.

Empirical propositions, and arguments based on them, can be sound or unsound, when their truth is determinable by observation. That's my take, anyway.

As I undertsnd it a propositional attitude can be a belief even if not all propositional attitudes are beliefs. So, I searched and found this:

Propositional attitude, psychological state usually expressed by a verb that may take a subordinate clause beginning with “that” as its complement. Verbs such as “believe,” “hope,” “fear,” “desire,” “intend,” and “know” all express propositional attitudes.

So, according to that article saying that S had a belief about the clock and saying that S had a propositional attitude towards the clock could indeed be two ways of saying the same thing and would be in the case that the propositional attitude in question was a belief, rather than a hope, desire etc..

Hence belief presupposes truth. — Banno

Belief presupposes a belief in truth, not the possession of it. If the truth cannot be determined, it is a mere human presumption that says there must nonetheless be a truth.

There are two basic ways that an argument can get at truth✝: by being right and by being wrong. Yet in order for this to work the argument must be seen to be right or wrong. If it is seen to be right then it will lead the one who sees it into the truth of its conclusion. If it is seen to be wrong then it will lead the one who sees it away from specious reasoning and away from an unsound conclusion. In each case the crucial factor is that it be seen, that it be transparent. — Leontiskos

I just came across this thread, so apologies if I repeat what has already been said. I don't see philosophical arguments as being true or false, but rather valid or invalid; that is consistent with their premises or inconsistent with their premises.

I think only in phenomenology, which is descriptive rather than argumentative, can truth be somewhat more determinable, and then only by common assent.

You might object that people can come to see the conclusion of an argument as true, but that would entail their assenting to the premises, and the conclusion being true to, that is consistent with, those. And the problem is that when it comes to metaphysics there is much more scope for polemical understandings than there is with phenomenological reflections on what seems to be the case with human experience.

So, either S's attitude towards the broken clock - at time t`- was not a belief about the broken clock or not all belief is equivalent to a propositional attitude, because broken clocks are neither propositions nor attitudes. — creativesoul

Why can't it be said that S had a propositional attitude towards the clock; namely the belief that it was functioning. I must admit I'm struggling to see what issue you are trying to highlight here.

It is tangential, and I'm being pedantic in saying that it is not that they couldn't have imagined it, but that they didn't. Although, that said, if determinism is true, then perhaps they couldn't have imagined it, but that would not be because it was unimaginable, per se, but because they were constitutionally incapable of imagining it. I hope you'll excuse me for being off-topic—I'm just having a bit of fun playing with ideas. :halo:

something has happened to them, which was 'unimagineable' - 'I never imagined that would happen!' — Wayfarer

Not "unimaginable", but unimagined; if they can say what happened to them, then it could not have been unimaginable.

Thereby absolving us of all responsibility as moral agents. — Wayfarer

Why do you say that? The idea of moral responsibility is inevitable for self-reflective social animals. To the degree that someone cannot be responsible to others, then to that degree he or she is not really fit for society.

'Religion" is not a strictly definitive term, but an "umbrella" term under which what are generally soteriological practices and / or beliefs can be understood to be ranged. In other words, most belief systems that we would class as religious are concerned, in one way or another, with salvation, and are, in one way or another, otherworldly, in that they don't see this world as being capable of providing the salvation that is yearned for.

The salient question is whether that yearning is a sign of health or of disease.

That's fair enough. I tend to think we have a political, social, cultural and historical as well as a basic physical and biological existence, and beyond all that, we simply exist. I think they are all different senses of existence.

The way I see it, the basic sense of existence or self is not a sense of existence in relation to others, but rather in distinction from everything other, and this is a quite different, simpler and yet more encompassing sense of self.

On the flipside of that existential self, there is also the even more comprehensive "spiritual" sense of self as being inseparable from the cosmos, but that comes with an entirely altered state of consciousness, not merely a different attitude.

So, even though I am not a cat I can still be certain that I am? Just not absolutely certain. — jgill

No, you can feel certain that you are a cat, but you cannot be certain that you are a cat if you are not. The point was to draw a distinction between being certain and feeling certain. I say you can only be certain of those things which cannot be, without contradiction, denied or which can be directly observed. On the other hand, you could feel certain about all kinds of things you cannot be certain about.

I am not asserting my "existence"; I am claiming what I will stand for in relation to how our community judges a part of our lives where we are at a loss as to the criteria (e.g., for what will count as being just). I "exist" in standing against (or for) our shared culture in a way that requires that I have to back it up. — Antony Nickles

Your citing of Descartes had apparently led me to think you were addressing the ontological, not the political, question of your existence; a different question altogether, and one I'm not especially interested in, so...carry on.

You've never been called a bellicose bumpkin?

First, that sounds exhausting. — Antony Nickles

It's only exhausting in principle. I think the point still stands, if my existence is dependent on my being able to assert it, then I don't exist at some times and not others simply because I only assert my existence at certain times. The very idea seems absurd to me.

My view is that it is by virtue of having a sense of self (which I believe some animals also have) that I can be said to exist, and I don't believe that sense is operative only at the times that I am reflectively aware of articulating it as an assertion of self-existence.

However, it seems possible to me that there might be distant processes that are far enough away from any minds that the goings on within them are quite irrelevant to any experiences. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sounds like you are probably talking about almost all of the universe, at least with reference to human experience.

"The world" as abstract theoretical construct exists, and it is mind created. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'd say there are as many conceptions of "the world" as there are people. The basic idea "the world" is culturally learned, it is now a convention, and who knows who it was that first articulated it?

I can also see how an enhanced awareness of epistemology might lead one away from, let's say, Islamic fundamentalism and into a more nuanced, allegorical read of the Koran. This could make you a better person - more aware of and accepting of other ways of living and the benefits of diversity and non-dogmatic, less judgmental modes of living. Or something like this. — Tom Storm

Yes, that makes sense to me.

I think it means, "Until you drop dead while adding 320 to 180 and only manage to say '5' before you keel over."

We will all stand around saying, "See, he was using quaddition!" — wonderer1

:lol: Yeah, that's about how seriously I take this nonsense.

You've just repeated a synonym for "forever" so how does that help? What does "no limit" mean and does any of this really help without specifying what exactly has "no limit"? — Apustimelogist

Any term can only be defined in other terms, so how does any term help? :roll: You know as well as I do what 'forever' in the context of 'addition can go on in principle forever'. You also know what 'no limit' means in the context of 'there is no reason to think there is, in principle, any limit to addition'.

We follow a convention and accept a taken-for-granted everyday world. But that world is not created by anyone since it doesn't actually exist.